use it to the best advantage, would throw such a golden glow
over a dark complexion as to override anything but a very obdurate
prejudice. Mr. Spahr, in his well-studied and impartial book on
_America's Working People_, states as his conclusion, after a careful
study of conditions in the South, that the most advanced third of the
Negroes of that section has already, in one generation of limited
opportunity, passed in the race of life the least advanced third of the
whites. To pass the next third will prove a more difficult task, no
doubt, but the Negroes will have the impetus of their forward movement
to push them ahead.

The outbreaks of race prejudice in recent years are the surest evidence
of the Negro's progress. No effort is required to keep down a race which
manifests no desire nor ability to rise; but with each new forward
movement of the colored race it is brought into contact with the whites
at some fresh point, which evokes a new manifestation of prejudice until
custom has adjusted things to the new condition. When all Negroes were
poor and ignorant they could be denied their rights with impunity. As
they grow in knowledge and in wealth they become more self-assertive,
and make it correspondingly troublesome for those who would ignore their
claims. It is much easier, by a supreme effort, as recently attempted
with temporary success in North Carolina, to knock the race down and rob
it of its rights once for all, than to repeat the process from day to
day and with each individual; it saves wear and tear on the conscience,
and makes it easy to maintain a superiority which it might in the course
of a short time require some little effort to keep up.

This very proscription, however, political and civil at the South,
social all over the country, varying somewhat in degree, will, unless
very soon relaxed, prove a powerful factor in the mixture of the races.
If it is only by becoming white that colored people and their children
are to enjoy the rights and dignities of citizenship, they will have
every incentive to "lighten the breed," to use a current phrase, that
they may claim the white man's privileges as soon as possible. That this
motive is already at work may be seen in the enormous extent to which
certain "face bleachers" and "hair straighteners" are advertised in the
newspapers printed for circulation among the colored people. The most
powerful factor in achieving any result is the wish to bring it about.
Th